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by wpietri 2848 days ago
I think the core problem here is (lack of) consulting dollars.

The Agile movement got huge in part because a lot of its proponents could make good money promoting it. E.g., the MLM scheme that is Scrum certification. Or the many consultants, some good and some bad, who made bank teaching it to people. (I did that for a while.) This was also the death of what I think of as "real Agile" because the great bulk of consulting money on offer was selling watered-down Scrum to giant companies who wanted the feeling of change without hard work or actual change.

But there's no money in startup consulting. Startups don't have much money, and startup founders a) think they know things better than everybody else, and b) think they can ignore most of what matters to other businesses. (I'm a former startup founder, so that's not knocking anybody; it's just what's required by circumstance.) I know people who have started great startup-focused consulting businesses, and they've all gone elsewhere because it's impossible to make a living doing it.

From what I know of Ries's consulting it was at places like GE [1]. GE is definitely not a startup, but really wanted to be innovative and presumably paid him a bundle. And now he's moved on to the Long Term Stock Exchange. [2] This all strikes me as reasonable. He did his bit and set the ideas free into the world. Although I'd love it if he spent more time promoting the Lean Startup approach, I totally get why he's focused on doing what he wants, not what I want.

As an aside, for those still interested in discussing the topic, Lean Startup Circle still exists and still has an active mailing list. I'd love to see more people there: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/lean-startup-circle

[1] https://www.ge.com/reports/digital-magic-eric-ries-brought-s...

[2] https://ltse.com/team

1 comments

Hey William. I also think one of the big mistakes is that Eric trademarked Lean Startup. Check out the book, Starfish and the Spider. The way to kill a grassroots movement is to centralize the power and then it dies with the center.
Hi, Trevor!

I get that concern. But the Agile movement didn't trademark anything and came to regret it as the word got more and more watered down. All things considered, I prefer this outcome; at least the term still has meaning. If I had to pick next time, though, it would be making the trademark but building up enough of a community to carry the flame and then handing over the trademark.